SPAMALOT COMES TO CITY HOSPITAL

03-03-2007

Disturbing news reaches The Stirrer about a computer cock-up at City Hospital in Birmingham; e-mails carrying references for junior doctors applying for jobs got blocked in the corporate spam filter. Whoops!

On its own, this might have just been an embarrassing glitch - but it compounded the problems that City (in common with other hospitals around the country) are having with a new government scheme for training consultants.

Under the system - called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) - medics are being fast-tracked towards specialist status in six years, virtually half the length of time it has traditionally taken.

Quite apart from the issue of whether they'll be as well qualified as they ought to be, the whole system has been centralised, meaning that 30,000 doctors are applying for 22,000 posts via one over-worked computer programme.

It has already crashed and frozen on several occasions, and the deadline for applications hasbeen extended twice, leaving junior doctors unsure where they'll be working - or whether they'll have jobs at all - come September.

City Hospital's over-zealous spamblocker whichshut out information from outside refereesfor job applicantswas simply another headache forover-stressed administrators, already struggling to cope with a typically hasty reform, rushed through in November by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

Elsewhere, the BMA reports that the system is in such a chaotic state that doctors have been offered interviews for jobs for which they aren't even qualified.

Meanwhile it's still unclear what will happen to the 8,000 junior doctors who don't get jobs under MMC.